NSW Nationals State Conference - Bowral
24th June, 2012
NSW President Christine Ferguson, incoming President The Hon Niall Blair, Federal Nationals president John Tanner, Federal Women's President Dr Jackie Abbott, the entire team of NSW federal parliamentary Members and Senators are here for the Conference, ladies and gentlemen,I want to pay tribute to Christine and Colin for their five years of service the Party. Christine came to office in the tough times.
She has presided over the resurgence of the Party that culminated in the great NSW result.
It was a great personal achievement for Christine and her entire team.
I'd also like to acknowledge Spence Ferrier as Treasurer. I knew Spencer for years before I even knew he had connections to The Nationals. He has seen the organisation through the complexity of new state funding arrangements - an enormous task.
I also want to congratulate Niall Blair on his election as you new President and wish him well in continuing the fight to add the jewel of a victory in the next federal election to the Party's crown.
Today, I am told, is the second anniversary of Julia Gillard's ascension to Prime Minister. Somehow it seems a lot longer.
Whether she has days left in the job or more than a year she leave an awful legacy.
She will be remembered for her lie, gross mismanagement, boats that keep coming, the decline of manufacturing, lost competitiveness, massive debt and the loss of respect for government.
Our country needs a change.
The Independent experiment has failed. And the de facto Greens government has cost our nation dearly.
Carbon Tax
This time next week, Australians will have a carbon tax. Not just any carbon tax, but the world's biggest tax and the world's most comprehensive.
A tax we were promised we would never have.
From 1 July electricity, gas, housing, rents, council rates, groceries... all the things that are life's modern essentials will be going up and ratcheting up year after year.
It's the cumulative impact of carbon tax price rises that will hurt families.
It's a boa constrictor for your family budget. It's a perpetual squeeze that is designed to get tighter and tighter to force you to make more and more sacrifices.
Those mounting costs will also make our companies less competitive and see Australian jobs lost.
That's a particularly tough combination for families, especially in regional areas where the mining, agricultural and manufacturing industries contribute so much.
Lost jobs and higher and higher prices for everything.
Doesn't sound like economic reform to me... more like a death of a thousand cuts that targets people who can least afford it.
Not a single cobra-strike next week, but a slow strangulation as the boa constrictor tightens.
While the national debate has raged, and the government likes to talk about compensation or 'cash for you', it's important to remember that the very purpose for a carbon tax is that it has to hurt.
It is by definition designed to make people change their behaviour.
To think twice before turning on the heater this winter - we're lucky this conference is in Bowral today and not next week!
In other words, you are expected to suffer the cold rather than incur the carbon tax price hit... and all this suffering will save the planet.
Again, this hits people who can least afford it... the ill, the elderly, young families, the unemployed and the under-employed.
A government bereft of legitimacy, cobbled together out of expediency and self-interest, without a mandate, is imposing the will of a very few on the entire nation.
Labor continues to congratulate itself for imposing this tax on the businesses and families of Australia.
Labor seemingly only take pleasure out of new taxes, out of inflicting pain. They have done it at least 25 times since elected to office - more that 25 new taxes imposed upon the Australian economy.
This is no ordinary carbon tax. It is not in step with things happening in the rest of the world. This is by far the world's biggest carbon tax. There is nothing in its league anywhere else in the world.
The Australian carbon tax will raise more money in its first three months than the Europeans have raised since they started their tax six years ago.
There are 400 million Europeans, and only 22 million of us.
Australia is responsible for about 1.3 per cent of global emissions and the Europeans for 14 per cent. Yet our tax, in just three months, will collect as much money as the Europeans have collected in six years.
The legislation guarantees that the Australian carbon price will go up, up, up, even though the global price is going down, down, down.
Federal Budget 2012
A bit like the federal budget.
The Treasurer got one thing right on budget night, when he said this was a true-to-form Labor budget... hollow, shifty and not to be believed.
The fudged surplus of $1.5 billion is already shot, there were more broken promises over company tax cuts... but absolutely nothing to drive productivity, repay spiralling debt or secure Australian jobs.
There are many examples of how slippery the budget surplus is.
For instance, the $1.1 billion that is being paid early to local government of itself almost wipes out the surplus.
There's the $1.8 billion being paid to the states early for infrastructure projects. It will not build any extra roads sooner - it is just a money transfer from the Commonwealth to the state treasurers.
The $1.4 billion paid to the states early, mainly Queensland, for disaster relief.
The $1.5 billion compensation for the carbon tax, being paid early - paid this financial year even though the carbon tax only begins in 2012-13.
There is no surplus... it's just funny money.
Pacific Highway
There were absolutely no new projects announced for roads or rail in 2012-13. In fact, if you look at the overall expenditure on roads, it plummets from $6.2 billion in 2011-12 to just $2.6 billion in 2012-13.
There is less money for roads in 2012-13 than in the last year of the Howard government and there's less also in 2015-16.
The NRMA said in their budget night press release:
'NSW motorists will be shocked by a Federal Budget that slashes spending on the state's roads by almost half to an alarmingly low $1.2 billion.'
Yet we have Anthony Albanese pretending that he is committed to duplicating the Pacific Highway, and that it's the O'Farrell/Stoner government's fault the 2016 deadline for completion will not be met.
He dared to wave $3.5 billion under the noses of communities from Sydney to the Queensland border but only if NSW matched it. He must have known full well no state could find that amount of money.
The Prime Minister weighed in with the lie that this 50/50 split has always been the case. She said:
'The deal on roads is always 50/50. That is what the Minister for Transport has made clear and that is what the NSW government should step up to.'
That is demonstrably wrong.
Minister Albanese signed a Memorandum of Understand with the then-Labor NSW government for an 83-17 split - 83% funding by the Commonwealth. $2.541 billion coming from the federal government and $500 million coming from the state government.
In March 2009, the Commonwealth added another $48 million.
In May 2009, the Commonwealth provided another $618 million for the Kempsey bypass--nought coming from the New South Wales Labor government.
By that stage the split had got to 86% from the federal government and only 14% from New South Wales--an 86-14 split.
The new national partnership agreement incorporated these new figures, and it was signed by Minister Albanese, Minister Campbell and Minister Daley--all Labor ministers.
They signed up to an 86-14 split.
So every single project on the Pacific Highway when Labor was in government federally and when Labor was in government in New South Wales was on a split of at least 83-17, and in some cases 100-0.
It is only since the election of the state coalition government and a $468 million infusion made by the O'Farrel/Stoner government that the figures got even to 80-20.
Now there is a Coalition state government Labor wants to change the rules.
It is dishonest. We've come to expect that from Labor. But it treats the people of NSW and commuters along the Pacific Highway with contempt.
When we come to office we will pick up the pieces and get the Pacific Highway four-laning finished.
Road User Charges
Briefly, while I'm on the subject of roads, I want to talk about another big new tax - increases to the Road User Charges scheduled to take affect from next week.
The proposed 10.4% hike in Road User Charges is in addition to the carbon tax and comes at a time when the transport sector is struggling to survive big cost rises.
It is collected through registration fees and reduced fuel excise rebates to cover costs of road works attributed to heavy transport.
Today I announce that I have written to Minister Albanese asking him to withdraw these new determinations.
Our proposal would reduce the increase to 5.7% by eliminating an unexpected $144 million surcharge being imposed to correct earlier miscalculations.
If Anthony Albanese doesn't come to the party we will have no choice but to move to disallow the increased charges in Parliament to protect truck drivers from unfair, arbitrary increases in registration costs.
The Australian Trucking Association says that decision is based on out-dated truck numbers that inflate the amount drivers must pay to the government in 2012-13 and overstated road building and maintenance calculations.
Instead of counting the actual number of truck registrations, the ATA says the NTC took old registration figures and extrapolated a theoretical fleet size, which will see drivers fork-out $700 million more than they should.
Since the determination Ministers have agreed that the calculation model is in need of review. It would be grossly unfair to apply this model to justify such a huge increase.
Marine parks
In the last fortnight Labor issued its unilateral decree to lock up another 1.3 million square kilometres of our seas, more than doubling the number of marine reserves from 27 to 60.
They are boasting the biggest marine park in the world.
This has nothing to do with sustainably managing marine environments or fisheries.
It is just another empty gesture to rent Greens support for another week. But it is certainly a cruel barb for many coastal regions around the country.
It has real consequences for Australian commercial and recreational fishers and the regional communities which support them.
When 'lock it up!' is the government's approach to vast areas of Australia's territorial waters, is it any wonder that our supermarkets are overflowing with imported seafood?
It is a remarkable fact that Australia imports a massive 72 per cent of the seafood we eat.
For an island nation girt by sea, that is simply bizarre.
We control much of the area of the planet's oceans. Australia's exclusive economic zone in terms of sheer scale is third in the world behind only the United States and France, yet we are not allowed to feed ourselves with our own fish.
There is no doubt, of course, that we must conserve our oceans and be conscious of the breeding grounds and the seasons so that they can be sensibly harvested.
Indeed, to swim or snorkel or dive on the Great Barrier Reef is one of the truly remarkable experiences of life. The wonders of our oceans and the reefs are truly awe-inspiring and they must always be preserved.
Our fishing industry understands this only too well and is at the forefront of managing sustainable fisheries. Our recreational fishers and our marine tourism industries understand that the value of their entire industry is dependent upon having a sustainable environment, but they have been ignored.
In 2009-10 Australia produced 171,000 tonnes of seafood from wild catch.
By comparison, New Zealand's catch was 441,000 tonnes, from an area half as big as Australia's. They caught three times as many fish in an area half the size.
Thailand catches 14 times more fish than we do, despite having a fishing area 10 times smaller than ours.
So it is not hard to see that the government's marine park declarations have nothing to do with environmental management of our seas.
Australia harvests fewer than 30 kilograms of fish per square kilometre of its ocean territory, compared to a global average 20 times greater than that, at around 750 kilograms per square kilometre.
So we are not raping and pillaging our fisheries. There is no-one in the world that can match our management record, but there is a human cost here.
About 100,000 people are still left directly or indirectly employed in the Australian fishing industry and 3.4 million people engage in recreational fishing each year.
So the reality is that this will have an effect on fishermen, their families and the regional communities that support them.
Conclusion
Like in NSW and Queensland, an outcry will ring out across this country as we count down to the next election.
Take a whiff outside of the winds of change. Labor is on the nose.
History will damn this generation of Labor governments, both federal and state, and there will be a special place in its annals for this Prime Minister, who is condemned by her own words.
'There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead'.
The people will savour their day of judgment and we will be ready to lead them.
NSW will be a key state for the next election - whether its held next week or next month.
It will be a key state for determining the result also for The Nationals.
If we are to win the election, we must win in NSW.
Our best prospects are in NSW - five on the north of the state, one or two in the south - so it's no surprise this is our focus.
We already hold most of Queensland, barring one or two. We have two in Victoria and will be contesting another and we have one to defend in WA.
We saw the remarkable result in NSW in the state election, now we must replicate it federally.
You swept the state to the north and we must do the same federally.
We are ready.
Our policy review is now complete and our policy platform ready.
Our expenditure review is complete and savings identified to pay for our programs.
We are already working on our first 100-day plan and what we want to do in our first year.
We have an action plan.
Tony Abbott and I will soon be announcing details of some of the major infrastructure projects we want to start in our first year.
As well as how we intend to cut red tape and reporting requirements.
We will wind-back the Nanny-state - and give people responsibility for their own lives.
We will restore confidence and trust in our government and our country.
We will get our country moving again and retire Labor's debt.
In NSW - the people had had enough of Labor. In Queensland, the message to Labor was even stronger.
Now it is time to deliver the same loud and clear message to Labor in Canberra.
Thank you.
